My calendar says there is a new moon today. This happens at 4:13 GMT, according to one web site. “New Moons are the beginning of the 29.5 day moon cycle and signal a fresh start for the following month.” [1]

New Moons are a great time to plant seeds, set intentions, or perform actions in relation to what you would like to grow or manifest over the upcoming cycle. “It is best to do this as close to the minute of the New Moon as possible, but it can also be done over the following 24 hours,” advises the web site. [1]

A “Time Zone Converter” gives 4:13 GMT as equal to 11:13 pm Chicago time. [2] So apparently, in the Central Time Zone, you are supposed to wait until 11:13 pm to plant seeds in your garden.

Around this same time, the planet Mercury goes retrograde in the astrological sign of Gemini. This happens today, according to astrologer Holiday Mathis. But Farmer’s Almanac says Mercury goes retrograde tomorrow. Gemini is Mercury’s first home, says Mathis, and is therefore an auspicious place for the retrograde to occur.

How much of this is true? Aye, there’s the rub. Opinions vary. The dividing line between those who have faith in astrology and those who don’t goes back to Renaissance times. Were the books of Hermes Trismegistus, imported into Italy by Cosimo de’Medici, what they seemed? Or were they forgeries? Opinion is divided.

Isaac Casaubon, in 1614, seemed to prove that the Hermetica, as the books were called, had been faked by early Christians to support the importance of Christ. [3] By the 1700s, Casaubon’s version had become “the canon”, the undisputed truth. [4]

But then, in the early 1900s, Richard Reitzenstein, a German classical philologist and scholar of Ancient Greek religion, hermetism and Gnosticism, concluded that the religious context of the books was in fact Egyptian. Later, around 1914, Reitzenstein changed his mind and decided Iran had been the source of the writings. [4]

In 1945, Hermetic writings were discovered amongst the Nag Hammadi Codices. A major group of these documents are called “Sethian” because they give prominence to Seth, third son of Adam and Eve. [5] The Sethian writings and others, including Hermetic writings, found at Nag Hammadi, were overall described as “The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics” in 1960 by one Jean Doresse. [4]

Jean-Pierre Mahé, “un orientaliste français, philologue et historien du Caucase, spécialiste des études arméniennes,” received his doctorate in 1981 for his thesis, Hermès en Haute-Égypte (Hermes in Upper Egypt). [6] Mahé had studied the Coptic and Armenian versions of the Hermetica. Mahé concluded there had to have been at least some Egyptian background to the texts. [4]

The greatest impact of Mahé’s Hermes in Upper Egypt has been to re-establish an Egyptian ancestry for the Hermetica. [4]

In 1964, Dame Frances Yates had published an important book on the subject of Hermes Trismegistus, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. At the time, she favored the Casaubon interpretation. Later, in 1968, Yates caused a stir when she proposed Hermes to have been a major figure for the start of the scientific revolution and “detected Hermetic influence in major figures of the Renaissance literary canon, including [Philip] Sidney, [Edmund] Spenser and [William] Shakespeare.” [4]

Yates’ 1968 stir came on the heels of a scholarly paper by J.E. McGuire and P.M. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan'”. Their paper connected Isaac Newton with ancient theology and Hermes Trismegistus. [4]

This is all very abstruse and I am still looking into the subject. But the Hermetic writings and the question of their authenticity is crucial to the question of astrological influence. “The reign of ‘Hermes Trismegistus’ can be exactly dated,” wrote Yates in 1964. “It begins in the late fifteenth century when [Marsilio] Ficino translates the newly discovered Corpus Hermeticum. It ends in the early seventeenth century when [Isaac] Casaubon exposes him.” A mechanistic backlash against occultism resulted, with the pendulum swinging from one extreme to another [3]. And that is the polarized dividing line many are still at even today: One side (mechanists) scoffs at astrology; the other side (animists) believes in an astral influence.

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About ersjdamoo

Editor of Conspiracy Nation, later renamed Melchizedek Communique. Close associate of the late Sherman H. Skolnick. Jack of all trades, master of none. Sagittarius, with Sagittarius rising. I'm not a bum, I'm a philosopher.